Nongenetic Quotes & Sayings

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. — Ernest Hemingway,

Every one knows how absurd it would be to infer from what a man is or does when in a private station, that he will be and do exactly the like when a despot on a throne; where the bad parts of his human nature, instead of being restrained and kept in subordination by every circumstance of his life and by every person surrounding him, are courted by all persons, and ministered to by all circumstances. — John Stuart Mill

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. — Amy Hempel

You have to smile after making trouble. This way you get in less trouble. — EunB

I only make movies that are interesting to me. — Brian Grazer

I have a mind to think, Lord; help me to think of You and for You. You — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead. — David Mamet

Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from. — Clayton Christensen

After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and that it's no less absurd and presumptuous to try on the skin of a bank teller than that of a Bigfoot or a dragon. — Peter S. Beagle

No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after conception, or by haphazard fluctuations in the chemical soup in the womb or the wiring up of the brain or the expression of the genes themselves. — Steven Pinker

Without knowing how to calculate the odds on such matters, it seems improbably to me that God would have whispered the meaning of my life into the ear of some guru or authority. — Sam Keen

The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation. — Stephen Sondheim

It's botherin' me, man. You know, you can't say this, you can't say that, I'm like, well, how am I gonna talk about the world? You know? I mean I need to talk about something to you all, can I - can I do it? Can I talk to y'all? I mean, I hope the kids are in bed, you know, because I got to talk, y'all. — Martin Lawrence